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Pouring out a ‘Thunderbird’ for Nightcaps lead guitarist David Swartz, dead at 73

One of the most influential guitarists from Dallas died earlier this month, and only now does news of his passing reach his former hometown. The sad note landed in the in-box Saturday, along with details for a memorial and wake, both scheduled to take place here on March 8.

The Nightcaps at the birth of immortality, with David Swartz at far left

David Swartz died in Salina, Oklahoma, on February 7 at the age of 73. It’s quite likely you’re unfamiliar with the name: Swartz made music a long, long time ago, when he was a teenager playing alongside other teenagers. He played on a handful of singles in the late 1950s and very early 1960s released on local businessman Tom Brown’s Vandan label, home to other legendary footnotes such as the Gentlemen and Five of a Kind. Then he went into the Navy, where he served as a medic, only to return home to open an insurance company — hardly the stuff of rock-and-role lore.

“The Nightcaps — that was the first album I ever bought,” Oak Cliff’s Jimmie Vaughan told me years ago. “I learned how to play lead and rhythm and bass and drums off that record practically. That was the [expletive] there — ‘Wine, Wine, Wine.’ It had — and it’s hard to say exactly what it is — but it had just a feeling.”

Jimmie’s band the Fabulous Thunderbirds took its name from the Nightcaps’ song. It touched baby brother Stevie too, who, like ZZ Top, would record “Thunderbird” (but, unlike ZZ Top, would never claim he wrote it):

The Nightcaps — Billy Joe Shine on lead vocals, Gene Haufler on rhythm guitar, Mario Daboub on bass, Jack Allday on drums, Swartz on lead guitar — were kids who quickly lost their amateur status. Legend has it Shine wrote “Wine, Wine, Wine” during study hall at Jesuit High School, before it became Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas. Soon after the Nightcaps were regional hit-makers playing house parties and sharing stages with the likes of up-and-comers named Ike and Tina Turner and immortals such as Jimmy Reed. They played everything too, from rockabilly to blues, providing the garage-rock template for others who followed — among them Steve Miller, who was playing with Boz Scaggs and their Marksmen by 1959, and Sam Samudio, who, after the release of the Wine, Wine, Wine LP in 1960, assembled his West Dallas Pharaohs.

I first heard of them long, long after they’d disbanded: Four days before Christmas in 1992 the original members sued ZZ Top in Dallas federal court over the song “Thunderbird,” which appeared as the first song on ZZ Top’s fourth album, 1975′s Fandango!. The Nightcaps wanted $9,990,000 from the band, which, they said, had not only recorded “Thunderbird” but claimed it as their own.

But Judge Irving Goldberg dismissed the Nightcaps’ suit, ruling that the band’s window of opportunity to claim copyright had long since closed. “Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery,” Goldberg wrote, “but it may also lead to jealousy when the imitator succeeds where the imitated does not.”

The Nightcaps would play the occasional reunion show at Poor David’s Pub or the Ponderosa Stomp in the 1990s and even later. But, as the judge insisted, their moment had long since passed. The teachers had long ago been eclipsed by their students who’d gone off to make millions at their expense. The city of Dallas wouldn’t officially recognize the Nightcaps until 2009, upon the occasion of the band’s 50th anniversary.

But you will have two chances to pay your final respects on March 8.

At 1:30 p.m. that Saturday, a church memorial will take place at Central Congregational Church of Dallas, which is on Royal Lane near the Dallas North Tollway. Then at 5 p.m., there will be a “music wake in Swartz’s honor” at Club Dada in Deep Ellum, according to Linda Freeman. She reminds: “Both remembrances are open to the public and casual dress is encouraged.”

Bring your own Thunderbird.

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